By a Thread cover art

By a Thread

Elemental Assassin, Book 6

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By a Thread

By: Jennifer Estep
Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
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About this listen

"When killing people is your job, there’s no such thing as a vacation. Then again, how often does an assassin live long enough to enjoy her retirement? In this line of work, you either get lucky or you get dead. And since I destroyed my nemesis, Mab Monroe, a few weeks ago, all of Ashland’s lowlifes are gunning to make a name for themselves by taking out the lethal Spider—me, Gin Blanco.

"So I’m leaving behind my beloved barbecue joint and heading south with my baby sister, Bria, to cool my heels in a swanky beach town. Call it a weekend of fun in the sun. But when a powerful vampire with deadly elemental magic threatens an old friend of Bria’s, it looks like I’ll have to dig my silverstone knives out of my suitcase after all.

"Complicating matters further is the reappearance of Detective Donovan Caine, my old lover. But Donovan is the least of my problems. Because this time, the danger is hot on my trail, and not even my elemental Ice and Stone magic may be enough to save me from getting buried in the sand—permanently."

©2012 Jennifer Estep (P)2012 Audible, Inc. Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Romance Assassin Paranormal Magic

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Critic reviews

"Gin Blanco is one of the most intriguing heroines on the scene.... If you have not gotten on the Gin bandwagon yet, do so today!” ( RT Book Reviews)
All stars
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This book is OK and a fairly entertaining listen. Having heard books 1-5 and enjoyed them this is more on the same formula with Gin coming to the aid of a defenceless restaurant owner against the evil villain. You can probably guess the rest.

All follows the usual path. Nice bit of backstory about Gin and Bria's developing relationship - also Donovan gets to be himself again though I find his character a bit hard to believe.

Laurens narration is just fine - nothing special but it doesn't detract from the book.
I enjoyed it and will listen to the next one in a few weeks but its not got much of a wow factor

More of the same

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Having listened to the first 5 books, I really dithered about getting this one. The story lines and certain phrases were starting to get repetitive and boring. But I did want to find out what happened to Gin after the showdown with Mab, and Lauren Fortgang is excellent at voicing the different characters, so I gave it a go.

The story line is basically the same as the first five books (Gin fights baddy, nearly dies, is healed by Jojo and returns to triumph over the baddy in the end) BUT it also spends time developing Gin's relationships with Bria, Owen and Donovan. Each of those relationships is sorted out, and most of the big storyline questions are answered, so I felt this book was a very satisfactory end to Gin's story and I'm glad I bought it. I feel like I've left her and the other main characters all sorted out and happy, and for me that's the end of this series. Even though there's something like another 15 books I now have no need, or desire, to listen to any more in this series.

A satisfying end to Gin's story

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if you took all the recaps out the book would only be about one hour long. The storyline is good there is no need to keep going over what has occurred in previous books in the series, if the reader is interested enough about the backstory then they will buy the books.

getting repetitive

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Each book repeats part of previous stories which takes up too much of book. Would be fine if you only read the one but when reading series it gets annoying. Enjoy the overall story.

Repeats story

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loved the narration and the love struggles going on while killing, really enjoyed the listen.

very enjoyable

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The Good

Strong female characters are always welcome for me.

The stupidity of her ex is classic and realistic for some men that think they can get away with that sort of treatment. But this was too heavily emphasised in the story. Raking over old ground.

The Bad

Every male character either wants to rape her, kill her, or be her boy friend. Its just too much!

Not only is there nothing new in this story in the series but it is not even entertaining as a story in and of itself.

The story is too lurid! Too many sexually explicit scenes for my liking.

Poor prose style, there's little of technical merit here. Quite clunky writing.

The Narrator

Too slow and too nasal - which grates after a while.

Summary

I decided to revisit this series after quite some time and was disappointed with this particular book. I will download a previous book in the series and see if it is as bad as this one. It is possible that my taste has changed since I last listened to them or maybe this one is a dud.

This one's a dud!

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Well gin goes on a little vacation and it soon turns out as bloody as the rest but by now you' think Jen would realise her readers knew all about all the previous books and who she has come up against and I find the constant reminders and flash back so irritating is she just padding. Anyway yeah yeah typical gin gets herself into a scrape gets hurt Jojo heals her and she gets revenge. Same old really just a different bad guy and a different local. Needs a bit of a change to the plot in my opinion. You could skip this book entirely but Lauren fortgang delivers her gin performance with ease.

Not sure about this one

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